Tag: Stelliform Press

SFF, Short stories

You Are My Sunshine and Other Stories

OJ

My new collection is out! You Are My Sunshine and Other Stories, published by Stelliform Press, is available now.

It’s a collection of speculative eco-fiction, ranging from eco-horror to solarpunk. Many of the stories have been published before, and you can read them in places like Clarkesworld (“You’re Not the Only One”) or Strange Horizons (“We Feed the Bears of Fire and Ice”). Have a read of either of these to see if you’ll like what’s in the rest of the book!

There’s also a few stories original to the collection, including the title novelette, “You Are My Sunshine.” This is one of my favourites, because it’s just so weird. It’s set in the same world as my Stelliform novella The Impossible Resurrection of Grief, where in the near-future ecological grief at a degrading environment causes a wave of insanity and suicide. Plus, the novella had jellyfish. Lots of jellyfish. There’s no jellyfish in “You Are My Sunshine” – this time it’s starfish. Zombie starfish, which are a real thing. Sea star wasting disease is spread in warming waters, and it causes the poor starfish to disintegrate… but the bits that fall off keep moving. For a while, anyway. If you’re a marine biologist, as main character Cyrus is, that’s pretty disturbing. Also disturbing are the severed human arms that keep appearing on his property, complete with apology notes. It’s bizarre, but I think it’s also a bit funny.

Stelliform has a fantastic range of books, focused on environmental and climate fiction, so if short stories aren’t your thing, take a look at their catalogue and you’re sure to find something appealing!

Horror, SFF, Short stories

Cover reveal for You Are My Sunshine

OJ

My second short story collection, You Are My Sunshine and Other Stories, is out in September from Stelliform Press! I’m really happy to say that the cover is done by the wonderful Rachel Lobbenberg, who did my last Stelliform cover, for The Impossible Resurrection of Grief. I love Rachel’s work – it’s always so detailed and creepy, and the tentacular sunflower here is the perfect example of this.

You can pre-order the book here. If you like eco-horror and solarpunk and the journey from one to the other, this collection might be for you. Behold the blurb:

Sometimes change can hurt. This collection of short stories traces the growing pains of a new world, beginning with the death throes of our current way of life and ending with a world transformed by science and technology, and by grief, hope, love, and humanity’s will to transform. This is a collection that will both tear you apart and tend to your wounds. Cade’s stories are informed by science, tracing the biological and emotional threads that bind us, human and non-human alike. You Are My Sunshine and Other Stories is a promise of what worlds are possible if we allow ourselves to change.

Novellas, SFF

The Impossible Resurrection of Grief

OJ

My new book is out! The Impossible Resurrection of Grief is published by Stelliform Press, and it’s more climate fiction from me. This time, though, I’m focusing on the idea of ecological grief.

With the collapse of ecosystems and the extinction of species comes the Grief: an unstoppable melancholia that ends in suicide. When Ruby’s friend, mourning the loss of the Great Barrier Reef, succumbs to the Grief, the letters she leaves behind reveal the hidden world of the resurrected dead. The Tasmanian tiger, brought back from extinction in an isolated facility, is only the first… but rebirth is not always biological, and it comes with a price. As a scientist, Ruby resists the Grief by focusing her research on resilient jellyfish, but she can’t avoid choosing which side she’s on. How can she fight against the dead and the forces behind them when doing so risks her home, her life, and the entire biosphere?

The book’s had some pretty good reviews! You can find a selection of them from The Chicago Review of Books, Locus, Ancillary Review of Books, and The Spinoff Book Report.

You should be able to buy or order the book most places (please consider ordering through your local bookstore!), and you can find all your buying options either on my book page here or at Stelliform.

Novellas, SFF

Pre-Order: The Impossible Resurrection of Grief

OJ

I have a new book coming out! The Impossible Resurrection of Grief is a novella from Stelliform Press, and it’s due out on May 20th. You can pre-order it at the link there.

Before I tell you anything else about it, just look at that cover. Isn’t it gorgeous? The cover artist is Rachel Lobbenberg, and she’s done an amazing job. If you look closely, you can even see the grumpy eyebrows on those little flying rock wrens!

Stelliform’s focus is climate fiction, which is something I’m enormously interested in. When I saw their call for novellas last year, I was determined that I would have to write something for them – I ended up writing this book during my time as artist in residence at Massey University/Square Edge, and I’m truly grateful for their support. My time as artist there was affected pretty strongly by pandemic, and I spent a lot of it in lockdown. One thing I noticed was the odd news article about how many people in lockdown were logged into nature cameras, such as those down at the albatross colony just outside Dunedin. People were feeling nature-deprived, and it struck me that as climate change accelerates and biodiversity plummets, the phenomenon of ecological grief (which is beginning to get some attention in academic circles) might become a more significant part of daily life.

In the climate-affected future of Grief, this is exactly what has happened. The Great Barrier Reef has died, and the repercussions of this, and of all the other ecological absences, are felt through a phenomenon known simply as Grief. But in out of the way places, some scientists are working to bring back to life some of the creatures that have been lost…